Cornyn: Congress will not allow default — Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, the Republican whip, said in Houston Thursday that Congress will not allow an impasse over raising the debt ceiling to result in the federal government defaulting on its spending obligations. — “We will raise the debt ceiling.

A new strategy for the GOP — It has become conventional wisdom that Republicans are suffering an internal split that President Obama is successfully exploiting to neuter the Republican House. It is not true, however, that the Republican split is philosophical and fundamental.

House G.O.P. Agrees to Lift Debt Ceiling for 3 Months — WASHINGTON — Backing down from their hard-line stance, House Republicans said Friday that they would agree to lift the federal government's statutory borrowing limit for three months, with a requirement that both chambers of Congress pass …

Stephen Colbert's sister will run for Congress — Stephen Colbert may have “run for president,” but his sister is actually going to run for Congress. — Elizabeth Colbert-Busch's soon-to-be-official campaign has informed South Carolina Democratic Party executive director Amanda Loveday …

Up next for Obama: A looming Democratic divide — As President Barack Obama approaches his second inaugural on Monday, he presides over a party that has largely papered over its divisions for the past four years thanks to the president's commanding popularity.

Naked-Image Scanners to Be Removed From U.S. Airports — The U.S. Transportation Security Administration will remove airport body scanners that privacy advocates likened to strip searches after OSI Systems Inc. (OSIS) couldn't write software to make passenger images less revealing.

Obama unveils ‘Organizing for Action’ — President Barack Obama on Friday announced the relaunch of his remaining campaign apparatus as a new tax-exempt group called Organizing for Action that will “play an active role” in “mobilizing around and speaking out in support of important legislation” during his second term.

Sandy Hook Conspiracy Theories Edge Toward The Mainstream — “By far the hottest topic of the moment.” Ignore it and it won't go away. — There are two kinds of conspiracy theories: The ones about the Illuminati and about mysterious “chemtrails,” which lurk forever in the online twilight zone …

Whoops: PolitiFact's ‘Lie of the Year’ Turns Out to Be True — Last month, PolitiFact selected its “Lie of the Year.” Given PolitiFact's dubious record of singling out Republicans for lying far more often than Democrats, you probably could have guessed the winner of this particular sweepstakes was a Mitt Romney campaign ad:

Is Lance Armstrong the world's biggest liar? — “[This was] one big lie that I repeated a lot of times.” — It is fair to say that in more than three decades of reporting, The Fact Checker has never written a sports story. But The Fact Checker has written a lot about people who stretch the truth …

The Next Four Years — President Obama's second inaugural comes at an interesting moment, what you might call the end of the era of the Grand Bargain. Throughout his first term, Democrats and Republicans didn't achieve a Grand Bargain on spending and taxes, but there was a sense that history was moving in that direction.

The Education of Ezra Klein (and Barack Obama) continues: In 2007, Young Ezra Klein was full of enthusiasm about the cost-saving potential of electronic record keeping in the health industry. The failure to rapidly adopt this new technology was nothing less than an indictment of the American way of Medicine:

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